Shouldn’t a yellow flag section be BEFORE the place(where raikkonen spun), so as to warn any approaching drivers??

In any case, apparently Sauber feel they had telemetry data that Kobayashi DID NOT set a ‘faster’ sector time to which the yellow flag section belongs to. That does not mean he lifted off for the yellow flags, unless of course, Sauber also have telemetry data that suggests this, but i didnt notice any place where they have specifically confirmed this!

I do not want know how J-E. Vergne would be feeling right now …. sense of injustice? Maybe, but I think the Stewards want to appear apolitical but no matter their decision, it would still look political. In this case the fight for the WDC.

That’s because when others do the same stewards prefer not remembering what happened. But let’s be fair. This years stewards have been right most of the times. I didn’t see this particular move on Tv so I don’t know how strong the move was. To obstacle Alonso? Ferrari is bringing the obstacles to him not giving him a better car!!!

@omarr-pepper
Vettel is a good driver (more like Button).
But he’s not great/superfast/out-and-out-racer. Any honest person knows that Vettel’s success so far has been mostly the car.
What he needs (and will still need even he gets 3rd WDC) is a worthy opponent in the same car, so he can prove himself.
His move to Ferrari in 2014 will certainly answer all these questions.

Any honest person knows that Vettelâ€™s success so far has been mostly the car.

@jason12@omarr-pepper Any honest person knows that he has performed extremely well throughout his career, even when he was in midfield machinery, therefore his success isn’t any more down to the car than it was for the other champions on today’s grid, or the past.

However, I do not wish to have another long argument about this issue, especially since I didn’t see anybody on this article fail to give credit where credit is due.

Any honest person knows that Vettel’s success so far has been mostly the car

And Schumacher’s 7 world championships weren’t “mostly the car”, and Senna’s dominance of 1991 wasn’t “mostly the car” etc etc. I really hate it when people use this argument against him. Do you want to know what shows he’s a great driver? He’s second in the world championship this year (even with his retirement in Valencia) when the McLaren has clearly been he fastest car on average. Sure, Alonso may be leading in a worse car, but quantifying Alonso compared to Vettel doesn’t do him justice: Alonso has the experience and is for sure one of the all-time greats.
34 pole positions in 4 years of full competition; if that isn’t the mark of a great driver then I don’t know what is.

@jason12 – I don’t think you’re being fair here. The regs changed in 2009, but Vettel had already won for Toro Rosso by then, and there were also radical changes in 2005- when Alonso’s Renault team benefited. I doubt you’d start holding that against him.

With regards to the article/video you linked to, you also need to consider that as double reigning champion, Vettel is clearly the target, or common enemy of Alonso and Hamilton. Those comments also contradict the interview that aka_robyn posted.

In your first video Alonso says Vettel is one of the two most talented drivers on the grid (presumably excluding himself…)

This “outdrive the car” meme is usually complete and utter rubbish. Because nobody wins in crap cars, outside of an occasional fluke or weather-related serendipity.

Great drivers drive to the limit of the car. You cannot go faster. You can make fewer mistakes, you can get closer to the edge, you can find great setup, etc. If Alonso is so wonderful why doesn’t he put his inferior car on pole? Because he can’t outdrive the car. Get over it. He won his championships in the fastest car, or when not the fastest the most reliable. Same with Hamilton, and Schumacher for that matter.

Is it 3 reprimands and a grid penalty, or is it 3 reprimands for the SAME OFFENCE before a penalty. Because Vettel got a ridiculous reprimand for laying rubber in a pitbox one race and one for a dodgy pit entry when there wasn’t another car on the circuit to endanger.

According to the regs, at least two of the reprimands have to be for driving offences:

18.2 Any driver who receives three reprimands in the same Championship season will, upon the imposition of the third, be given a ten grid place penalty at that Event. If the third reprimand is imposed following an Incident during a race the ten grid place penalty will be applied at the driver’s next Event.
The ten grid place penalty will only be imposed if at least two of the reprimands were imposed for a driving infringement.

Yet again I don’t understand the FIA’s idea of justice. How they can reprimand a driver for illegal blocking while they have applied a grid penalty to the other driver for the very same offense just hours earlier. FIA, make up your mind. Please.

@vettel1
Then the penalty should be of different severity, for instance 5 for Vergne, 3 for Vettel. A reprimand is a confirmation of actually being guilty of the offense, but it’s by no means a penalty. It’s about whether an offense is penalized or not. It’s obvious that the severity of penalty should be proportionate to the severity of the offense, but such cases as today, when one driver is punished and the other is not, should not be taking place.

yes but does it say anything in the rules about how the following driver is affected makes it a lesser or greater offence. Same offence should result in the same penalty, another inconsistent decision by the stewards.

Yes, but does it say anything in the rules about how the following driver is affected makes it a lesser or greater offence.

No, and I think that’s why they use Homo Sapiens’ as stewards, not robots. Not everything can be decided as easy as replacing variables in a formula with constants.

Let’s put it this way: If somebody in the USA speeds 60mph (Roughly 100 km/h) above the, say, 35mph speed limit and as a result 10 people are killed then he’s certainly going to court-10 times, and spend the rest of his life in prison. On the other hand, somebody speeding 100 mph (Roughly 160 km/h) above the speed limit which is, say, 90mph on an empty turnpike at 12 in the afternoon the police there will probably fine the second driver only a few hundred dollars, without the need to be prisoned, or go to the court for that matter.

He made an effort to get out of the way and left Alonso the racing line. Perhaps he was a bit sketchy in what direction he was moving to but I don’t believe that, judging from the footage, Alonso lost a lot of time.
I don’t disagree with the stewards decision to reprimand him however.

I can see why it’s questionable, but it looks like a block to me. If the team had told Vettel that Alonso was coming, Vettel could have reasonably made it back to the pits before Alonso arrived on the scene at all. You can’t tell me that Vettel was driving slowly to preserve his tyres; it would have taken him all twenty seconds to get to the pit entry, and that’s not going to take even a lap out of the lifespan of his tyres.

The more challenging question is what Red Bull would have done if Webber had been in Vettel’s position – would they have challenged it, or would they have rolled over and taken the penalty?

doesnt look like a block to me, he saw him coming and kept going straight and didnt take the turn, it was jus slightly bad timing, a slight miscalculation. alonso wasnt up in arms about it, and probably his evidence to the stewards helped the resolution.

I’m not 100% sure it was a block, but Vettel was certainly taking the mickey by taking so long to negotiate a tight hairpin. Fair enough driving at that pace on the nice wide bit of track preceding it, but the slow entry into the chicane/pit does strike me as a little cynical

An utterly unjust decision. Poor Vergne deserved the penalty even less than Vettel did. If Vettel wins the WDC this season,he will probably be the most undeserving and the least meritorious of all the triple champions.

@stirper @brace You’re showing me a video where Vettel moves to the left to get out of Alonso’s way as soon as possible. If that is worthy of a penalty, why not just go back to the 1 lap qualifying system from 2003-2005?

This is called blocking. Is opinable if it was intentional or unintentional. Peronally im ok with the system 2003-2005, is more fair than this…it’s strange but i never seen Alonso & Ferrari blocking someone when this duo work together…Red Bull knows that Alonso was coming but didn’t notice….this is bad very bad if it’s like this

From watching the video it seems Vettel was fortunate to escape a penalty here.

But the stewards’ ‘explanation’ is so inadequate it’s hard to make an informed comment about it. The reasoning simply says “self explanatory” which is not sufficient when they’ve spent three hours looking into it:

However I do think it’s significant that Alonso hasn’t – as far as I am aware – said it cost him any time. It isn’t mentioned in Ferrari’s post-race comments. And I’d be surprised if any team passed up a chance to make trouble for their closest championship rivals.

Alonso breaked exactly after the 100m mark , which is the normal braking zone. So Vettel didn’t affect his breaking point. But , Alonso had to keep i slightly closer line to the first appex , this maybe cost him about a tenth . Beside that ,when Vettel realized Alonso was on his back he went as left as he could and clearly off the racing line in the entrance of the chicane. This incident has nothing in common with Verge’s- Senna’s and therefore can’t be compared with that. The decision of the stewarts , in my view, is clearly Right.
Anyway, that lap was compromised earlier by Raikonen’s yellow flags so why would it be fear to penalize an action which had little to no effect to another driver?

Does anyone know if the two first sectors of this lap where green for Alonso and how much time exactly did he lost in that last sector compared with his previous best?

im sorry but that is a penalty any way you look at it vettel is on the racing line of an approching driver still trying to set a lap time this is impeding. also vergne did the same thing and got a penalty so if the stewards where fair vettel should have received the same treatment in my opinion this is just favoritism towards marque teams. higher teams such as red bull, ferrari and mclaren get away with many decisions in these circumstants which i believe is unfair to other teams. if you look at the penaltys given for this type of incident this year and other years midfield teams are always getting these penalty’s. the fia have to get there **** together and stop playing favorites.

this incident involves two big teams redbull and ferrari , not a big and a small one….. with the big favoring….
Except you thing RB is a little bigger team and that makes the difference in stewards decision.

in the history of Formula 1 you can’t compare Ferrari with Red Bull…we can compare Ferrari with Mclaren…which are the 2 greatest team. Red Bull have to pass at least 20 years in formula 1 to be compred with this 2 team. So yes Red Bull is a small team with some money… i bet that in 7-8 years they will leave formula 1 or change name…

Verge stayed in the racing line completely and in the whole chicane doing nothing to give room to Senna and destroying his lap and leaving him because of that outside Q2.
Senna had all the right with his side and deservedly complained.
I didn’t hear Alonso nor Ferrari complaining about this incident. If they thought they right i don’t think they we didn’t say nothing.
Vettel’s performance was so dominant that he had to do in each Quallify only one run.
In total he run 11 laps in all three Q’s . Which is only comparable with drivers that get out in Q1.
So it would be fair to take this pole away from him for something that didn’t give him any benefit at all?